


You Break It, I Buy It

by executrix



Category: Revenge (TV), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:41:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Avengers movie.  An evening at Snark Tower: real estate, engineering, and topping from the bottom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Break It, I Buy It

“And your lovely amanuensis?” Nolan asked politely, pouring Black Dahlias into Steuben crystal. It was a nicely judged move. Appropriating another man’s barware is both a territory grab and a gesture of concession: be my guest! In your very own tower! 

“Pepper’s with Natasha in Brighton Beach getting hammered—uh, plotzed—on buffalo vodka and eating pelmeni,” Tony said. It had been the kind of alien invasion that required re-thinking of many common idioms (e.g., “when the Chitauri hit the fan”).

Nolan took a sip, couldn’t find a coaster, surreptitiously wiped the bottom of the glass on his sleeve, and put down the glass. “The reason I brought me here today is that—uh, you know I bought Grand Central Station, right? What’s left of it?”

Tony shook his head, eyes wide and velvet-dark over the rim of the glass.

“Mostly, I just wanted to fire Mr. Orange Comb-Over,” Nolan said. “But it turned out to be surprisingly affordable. I mean, once the financial community realized that I have a lot of money, with the acumen they have displayed recently, they were falling over each other to lend me a lot of it. So my actual cash involvement is…I guess I could take your S.H.I.E.L.D. team to the Carnegie Deli for pastrami sandwiches on it. I mean, sort of a lot of money for what you get, but not in the larger scheme of things.”

Tony clattered down his glass. “So you came here to tell me that it’s OK, that you don’t blame me for smashing it up and now you’re going to fix it? Well, fuck you very much, we saved the world.”

Nolan blinked. “No,” he said softly, concerned, although as far as he knew it was the other guy who had the Other Guy. “If you have some time left after your Avengenda… At first I was planning to put Grand Central back the way it was, or maybe the original way it was, but I, uh, kind of downloaded a lot of your work on sustainable energy here at Stark Tower and I thought that with adaptations it would really work for mass transit. You know—not personally, of course—that there’s a ton of subways there—in Grand Central--and MetroNorth. It would be amazing if they ran on clean renewable sources. Not that it actually matters if we have any more money, except for point value, but you could do really well on licensing the tech, too.”

Tony, hands clasped behind his back Napoleonically, prowled around the room, thinking it over. It could be a sweet deal but it would, to an extent, allow Nolan to call the tune, which would be, Advantage, Ross. 

Tony was not a model employee. Nobody liked going out for sushi with him. Anybody else with an infinite wallet would relax into “Omakase!” submitting to the judgment of the sushi master. Tony sent specs the night before.

The next circuit ended in front of the vitrine where a suit was displayed. “Want me to take it out of the case?” he offered, generously. It occurred to him that, since that would involve Versace slacks hitting the deck, it was turning into **that** kind of evening. He recalibrated. Tony: Superhero. Nolan: on borrowed time; the only reason he had never been mugged a gunpoint by a Chihuahua was their failure to develop opposable thumbs. Advantage Stark. Also, although Tony had certainly augmented the pile he inherited, Nolan had made all his money himself, and that rankled Tony a little.

“It’s candy apple red,” Nolan said fastidiously. Short guys and their compensations, he thought.

“Pot. Kettle. Pot. Kettle,” Tony said, because Nolan wore a sport jacket that, on closer inspection, proved to be crocheted out of tiny but beautifully hemmed strips of madras. As if a MirrorVerse Chuck Close had made a catastrophic turn into making really ugly jackets.  
Nolan’s phone rang. 

“Um, Emms, busy here,” Nolan said. “Actually doing something that benefits more people than you. Yeah, all right, you and your father. But, still, lots more of them.”   
Tony took advantage of his eavesdropping break to make a call of his own. “Bruce, Nolan Ross is over here—yeah, that one—and he has a great train set. He wants to license my tech to re-start the midtown mass transit. Also on the subject of commuter traffic—really long commute department--he bought what’s left of one of those Chitauri snake-roller coaster-typewriter key things and it wouldn’t be fair to start reverse-engineering it without you.”

Bruce was subletting a place in Williamsburg, and the subways were beyond fucked, so it would have taken him ages to get to Stark Tower. By then, Nolan had hung up on Emily, so Tony and Nolan bickered about whose helicopter they should send for Bruce. The guest helicopter was the closest to the edge of the helipad. 

Meanwhile Bruce demurred about being collected by helicopter, for carbon footprint reasons. Tony was halfway through making up a footprint joke when Nolan gave him a look implying that Nolan had a pretty tight alpha of an app that would, at last, let people actually punch you in the mouth over the Internet, So Tony just launched into a triple-time explanation of why it was in the environment’s best interests to get this taken care of, now. 

By the time Bruce arrived (after a stop in Journal Square to pick up some gunpowder masala dosas and fried pomfret and a couple of six-packs of Corona and some Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt), Tony and Nolan, after strenuous negotiations and a few more Black Dahlias, had merged their standard confidentiality agreement forms. Tony lent him a fountain pen carved out of chalcedony to sign the result. 

Bruce loved the idea, but he thought Amtrak should be included too, but that would require a whole thing with rights-of-way and a station-to-station link, and considering that the take-out was from Jersey City maybe they should include the PATH too. 

About two in the morning, Bruce was yawning, so they made an appointment with one each of Stark Industries and Nolcorp’s outside counsel (who, the economy being what it was, were actually glad to be blasted out of bed at 2 am to book some $800 hours) and sent him home.

“Shall I have my pilot come back after he drops off Bruce?” Nolan asked. He had his phone in his left hand, ready to give the pilot his instructions. He extended his right hand, palm at a 45 degree angle, “Or…come back tomorrow?” because the answer would determine if that would be a handshake or a caress. 

In a breath, in one heartbeat and one whirr, there was a ten-thousand-move blitz match of 3-D Headgame Chess. They were both running at gigaflops. But, like two magnets, facing positive pole to positive pole, they were nearly repelled by too much similarity. As Nolan said, he was about a Three on the Kinsey scale. Tony was anywhere on the Kinsey scale he damn well felt like being. In fact, he made a mental note to consider buying it up and sticking a nameplate on it. He’d get Pepper working on it in the morning.

Tony had decided that there was only one way he wanted the night to end up: his dick pistoning down Nolan’s throat. Nolan getting thoroughly had across and against a variety of incidentally upholstered flat surfaces. The main problem with immediate implementation of this objective was how obvious it was that Nolan thought this was a great idea. There was no conflict. No form of persuasion was required, and the only real question was how he took his first cup of coffee in the morning. 

Tony thought that most people misunderstood Don Juan. It wasn’t just about finding thousands of women who, when hit up for some sugar, would say, “Yeah. Whatev.” It was about making women need what they urgently didn’t want to want. To need, demand, live for what they needed NOT to want. Whimpering a demand to be sent so far past their limits that they’d have to pack a lunch. 

But these days, women were no challenge. Well, maybe bagging Mother Teresa would have been tough, and the Holy Ghost would kill him if he tried anything. But more crucially, women weren’t the competition. 

Tony believed in dreaming big. Making Steve beg, spoiling Captain America for anyone else, including his eventual wedding night with one of those pageant princesses who dedicated their corseted twirls in stripper shoes to Jesus. In fact, Tony sort of wondered why there already wasn’t a Captain and Mrs. Miss America. Or a reality show: The Biggest Bachelor Patriot. 

Tony wanted Nolan because he thought that was the ultimate testing of one man against another, the ultimate clash of wills. The Running of the Balls at Pamplona. Heterosexuality was what the people he knew had instead of virtue.

Plus, Nolan wasn’t just a money guy, he was sort of a science guy (although Tony trusted materials more than ones and zeroes) which meant that he’d have the right attitude toward the arc reactor. Too many people were grossed out, or ooey-gooey marshmallow sympathetic. You’d have to be an engineer or Frida Kahlo to recognize its severe beauty. 

Not to mention that if Tony were driven to place a Craigslist ad, “Smart, perpetually sarcastic billionaire seeks same,” he wouldn’t get many responses. No, he’d get thousands of responses, but if one of them was from Nolan he’d actually be telling the truth.

Nolan, on the other hand, wanted to go to bed with Tony because there was nothing on TV and Tony was pretty hot and they sort of-kind of respected each other and, best of all, Tony had never so much as heard of Emily Thorne. 

“Tomorrow,” Tony told Nolan. “I mean…stay. Stay here tonight.”

Nolan wound him in his arms long and small and Tony tasted blackberry brandy. Nolan must have snapped the phone closed and put it away, and he’d be a pretty good pickpocket because he had one hand on Tony’s face, a cheekbone nestled in the hollow of his hand, and his other hand inside Tony’s belt and shirt and briefs, grabbing his ass. 

(One Week Later)

“Jesus!” Nolan said, shaking his head. “Just one fete worse than death short of The Vampire Diaries.” Nolan didn’t have an invitation for himself, much less his plus-one, but he wasn’t worried. In the Hamptons, mi casa was always su casa when it came to dropping by for a shooting incident or to drink your non-host’s liquor, wire up his or her mansion for sound, or plant evidence of capital crimes. 

“Victoria Grayson,” Nolan said, bowing a little. “May I present Dr. Bruce Banner.” 

Victoria looked at the somewhat rumpled young man. Botox prevented her face from reflecting her opinion of his rust shirt, olive-drab trousers, and desert boots. “I hope he’s more…respectable than your last date, Nolan.”

“Not long-listed for the Man Hooker Prize like your son’s former best friend, you mean? No, not at all. Dr. Banner is a highly respected plasma physicist.”

“Oh, there you are, Ashley,” Victoria said, with a vague wave behind her back. “Please get Mr. Bonnet a drink.”


End file.
